The Kindergarten Art Class

From my current level of awareness and observation, I see mankind as a bunch of unruly kindergarten kids crammed together and told they’re having an “art” day. To get them started, there’s a pile of paper sheets on the floor, and next, a big bowl full of crayons of every conceivable colour. The kids are sat on the floor and more or less arranged around the items. Predictably things don’t go as planned, or even as unplanned. Some kids just lie back on the floor sucking their thumbs, trying to fall asleep. Some just grab paper and fistfuls of crayons and begin to draw wildly across their papers. Some quietly and dutifully wait for some sort of instruction. Some look at the ceiling and smile at something. Some start to argue over the items, a fight erupts and a couple of kids start to cry. Pandemonium reigns supreme.

So far I’ve described our general interaction as social communities through academic, scientific, religious, political, business and financial processes. Basic Earthian interaction.

But I missed something, didn’t I. I forgot to add that there is here at least one adult, one supervisor, someone with presumably superior knowledge and wisdom to bring these children together for a purpose that will bear some fruit. At the end of the exercise, each child will have a piece of paper with something drawn on it to take home.

Obviously, the Teacher aspect is missing in earth’s kindergarten art class. There is no one to bring the kiddies to stop fighting and to cooperate together and share the items offered on the floor. So you have an entire planet running on a pre-interventionist-teacher anarchic condition.

We already know why the kiddies act the way they do: it’s how they were raised, what they’d already observed at home; what they’d seen on TV or what they’d already experienced on playgrounds, in doctors’ offices and daycare. Also, it’s something locked in their DNA. It’s what they are. It’s their nature running its course and without the teacher intervention, that will be the course of their entire lives. Nothing will ever fundamentally change for any of them. That last line is worth repeating because it is a truism if there ever was one: nothing will ever fundamentally change for any of them.

We’re not short of groups and organizations trying to shove the teacher aspect in our face. Put your faith in science and all will be well. Believe in Jesus and you will be saved. Convert to Islam and Allah will bless you. Vote for the Democrats. Join the army. Join this, join that; support this, protest that; love this, hate that. There’s stacks of papers and bowls of crayons and anybody can draw lines in any sort of colours they want. Or can they?

It’s complicated. Someone’s sitting in the wrong place and they won’t move. Someone’s using the wrong colours and they won’t stop using those colours. Someone’s got paper they didn’t pay for which they took from someone else’s stack; they stole from them and now the “victims” want them punished for their crime. There are threats: if they’re not punished we’ll get some friends (allies) together and we’ll beat them up ’cause we’re better than they are.

Earthian civilization, in a nutshell.

Faced with this incurable condition, what do you, as an intelligent person do? Basically you can do whatever you want. You can choose to become one of the bullies, or one of their victims. Or you can choose not to participate in the art class as long as there is no consensus on how it should proceed.

The Art Class:

No matter where you sit, it’s anarchy all around and you’re expected to share a space with people who fear and hate other people in the class. “Look at her: she’s black. She shouldn’t be allowed in here!” “Look at him, he’s got no shoes, that’s gross!” “Look at those two with their ragged clothes munching on a couple of pieces of stale bread: that’s disgusting!” “Him? Don’t even think of being friends with him, he’s a Jew and we hate Jews.” “Look, she wearing a hijab, she’s a Muslim and flaunting it; she needs to be taught a lesson. Those kids in the corner? Their parents are commies.”

We may not be able to have them thrown out of the class but at least we won’t associate with them and when we get the chance we’ll gang up on them and beat the hell out of them. That’ll scare them and they won’t come back. We don’t want them here. This is our place and this is our stuff now.

Let’s say you are a reasonably intelligent person and you realize it’s not possible to participate in the class without compromises. No matter what, if you choose to sit with the two eating the stale bread, you find out they hate the black girl. If you sit with the black girl she tells you she hates the kid in bare feet ’cause he’s Catholic. If you sit with the Muslim girl you discover that she has been taught to hate Jews and Christians and she tells you that as the enemies of Allah they must die. If you choose to sit with the bullies who by now have most of the paper and crayons, maybe they’ll let you borrow some paper and maybe one crayon but the deal is, you swear to join them in the bullying later.

Fortunately there is one more choice. You can turn your back on all of them and walk away, alone. No paper, no crayons, no personal space on the floor, just yourself and the wilderness: thorns and hail, flowers and butterflies, blizzards and loneliness, gently flowing streams and renewal. More chaos, surely, but this time it isn’t deliberately ignorant or evil. It accepts you without throwing a mantle of exclusivity around you. You swim or sink – nobody cares, it’s all up to you.

But what about that programming? What about that Earthian DNA shit? Well, that is a thorny problem ‘cause you can’t blame that on anyone else, you have to face it. You need to get rid of your Earthian programming, or at the very least you need to cancel its inimical effects on your mind.

Everything up to and until I left the kindergarten class was me according to society. Society had designed the pigeon holes and I could only choose to function as an adjunct of society from one of those holes. Not anymore. Now, I can be me, according to my own choices. To hell with society and civilization.

I am about to reinvent myself as something completely new. Everything I am from this point on is the chosen me; chosen and designed by myself, no one and nothing else. I will never again return to the kindergarten art class; not for love, not for money, not for reputation, not for salvation. Being in collusion with the denizens of the kindergarten class is something I will no longer do until the day when I can no longer do it.